The Obama administration plans to conduct a large study on female genital mutilation (FGM) to try to assess how many girls and women in the US are at risk, and how many have already experienced, FGM.

According to experts, FGM tends to take place during summer break when parents take their daughter outside of the country for the practice.

Jaha Dukureh, a 24-year-old woman who grew up in Gambia, experienced FGM there, and then child marriage in the US, started a petition that gained more than 220,000 supporters. Dukureh, whose campaign was backed by The Guardian, says her half-sister died from complications of FGM. The successful campaign called on the Obama administration to conduct a report on the statistics of FGM in the United States.

In her petition, Dukureh says: "Many in the US hear about FGM and think it only happens in far away lands. Unfortunately, this is far from reality. I hear from girls every day that were born here in the United States who have been through FGM. These young women are your average American teenagers -- some of them you know, some of them you went or go to school with. And there are many more girls in the US that are at risk of being cut. The practice of FGM is illegal in the US but girls are being taken to other countries, usually their parents country of origin where they are cut in what is now known as 'vacation cutting.'"